t, and all our efforts did not avail to get the
air which alone could make sleep possible. Before this the mosquitoes
had given little trouble, but now they sang outside my net all night
long, while the poor, unprotected boatmen, robbed of their hard-earned
sleep, kept up an accompaniment of slapping on the other side of the
curtain. The river was falling again, leaving long stretches of mudbank
over which I had to clamber if I tried to leave the boat for a little
change, but I always managed to go on shore for a while when the men
were cooking and eating their supper. They took an interminable time
over it, and I never could see why they did not burn us all up, for
their cooking was done in the tiny hold in an unprotected brazier. In
fact, we did catch fire one day, but of course there was plenty of water
at hand.

The third day about noon we tied up for a short time to cook some sort
of a meal, and the rain coming on, the captain thought it best to wait.
To escape the bad air of the boat, where all the mattings were down, I
sat under an umbrella on the bank. A huge junk slowly pulling upstream
moored close at hand, and I watched with interest the trackers making
fast. They were men of all ages and sizes, but mostly young and well
grown. Their naked bodies were well developed and muscular, but often
cut or scarred with falling on the rocks. Having made all secure they
too got under cover on the junk, and fell to eating, naked and wet as
they were. It seemed to me that I sat for hours on that mudbank while
the rain fell in torrents and the river rose higher and higher, for the
changes in level are extraordinarily rapid. It was almost dark before we
could set off again, and then we got no farther than Kwei-fu, the
trackers' Paradise. Perhaps that was the reason why we could not start
the next morning, but I fancy it was the truth that the water was too
high to be safe, for there were double rows of junks moored under the
walls of Kwei-fu, and I saw no boats starting down. When the water
covers the great rock at the mouth of the Windbox Gorge, two miles down
the river, the authorities forbid all passing through. And anyway there
was nothing to do but make the best of it.

Kwei-fu is a pleasant-looking town set in maize-fields which grow quite
up to the walls. A few years ago it was notorious for its hostility to
foreigners. No missionaries were admitted, and when Mrs. Bird Bishop
came this way in 1897 she did not attempt